The Marquess
by Sera dy Relandrant
Summary: AU. Anne Boleyn was acquitted of all crimes because her marriage was declared invalid and permitted to hold her title of Marquess of Pembroke. She is considered as one of the King's previous mistresses but allowed to keep her daughter with her, a royal bastard.
1. 1536 - 1542

_"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."_

* * *

**May 1536 **

She steals out like a thief in the night, like a witch scurrying to her coven after her night's villainies are done with. They turf her out of her chamber in the Tower - they would have tumbled her out of her bed in her shift if they could but that she was not asleep (will she ever sleep easy again?) - and bid her be gone before morning. It is the King's express command.

One moment, she is kneeling at her window at midnight staring sightlessly at the hoar-white Tower Green. The next there is a mad pounding at the doors and she sways giddily to her feet as the frightened maids open them. There is a lord to speak with her, and he does so peremptorily as you might to a leper and storms out as soon as his message is delivered.

Is it a reprieve? Is it an exile?

No one can say and she does not wait to hear more, she scarcely spares the breath to ask the futile questions because already she is planning. There are horses saddled in the moonlit courtyard, there is her cloak cast upon the coffer and it is a moment's work to don one and clamber upon the other. Her ladies and maids protest that this is not how it should be done - there is no grace, no dignity in it, her chests are not packed, why her hair has not been brushed nor her gown changed in a day (in her melancholy she would not allow them to touch her), she _must_ wait.

She is past caring.

The Tower cuts a scythe-like shadow across the silvered cobblestones in the courtyard. She crosses herself when she looks up at it, shivering so fiercely that she can hear her teeth rattling - like an old woman's death rattle, she thinks. Her women hang about her, lost and bewildered, but the only one she turns to is her little niece. They look like ghosts in their nightgowns and nightcaps, with their cloaks hastily thrown over them.

"Have word sent to your mother and stepfather, Cate," she bids the thirteen-year-old girl. "You must be gone from this place as soon as possible. There is a curse upon it." She touches the girl's smooth golden hair and adds, "Tell your mother I am sorry. Sorry for all the hurt and grief I have caused her and that I love her true as only a sister can."

The girl looks up to her with trusting blue eyes. Her father's eyes. Henry's eyes. "What will become of you, Your Grace?"

Anne shrugs with all the elegance of the French mademoiselle she once was. It is chilly for a night in May, the bluff wind makes her cheeks and eyes smart but she can already feel her excitement rising, drowning out the numbness of months. It is another adventure and she is not an old woman after all. She is still young, still vivacious and God be good, she has her life before her. _For now._ "Nothing, save that you will never again have cause to call me Grace again I think. And thank God for it, niece."

She turns her back on her ladies, her companions in terror and grief and hopes that she never sees them again. Not even little Catherine Carey, though she loves her tenderly. She does not ever want to see them again, she does not ever want to stand here again, under the shadow of the Tower, and be reminded of that life.

_I have shed a dozen skins and lived a thousand lives, _she thinks. _I am a snake, as my own sister called me. __This is just another skin that I must shed. There is nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. _And she holds her head high and feels, irresistibly, a smile quirking at her lips. _Good God, I am drunk_ _on hope. I am run quite mad to smile like this, when I know nothing, when it might all be one of his cruel tricks. I am mad to live. _

One of her guardsman is speaking. "Where to, my lady? We were given no instructions but to take you away to wherever your pleasure was."

_Where to, indeed? Hever? _She dismisses the thought of her father's castle in Kent at once, they will not want her, they will send her away at once. They were happy to have her and her sister when they were in high favor but now they would rather cast them out as disgraced whores - aye, and call them so to their faces. _Not Rochford Hall where that vile bitch Jane Parker lives._ She thinks briefly of her sister but Mary is lodged in London._ And for sure I will not be allowed to abide here. _

"Hatfield," she says finally and smiles at the guardsman. He is quite flustered and it is the most delicious of pleasures to be reminded that she can still sway men with just a smile, just a fluttering of her lashes. "I am minded to see my daughter."

They ride hard for Hatfield House and by dawn, she is dismounting in the square before the manor. "Keep safe, my lady," the guardsman says, bowing to her.

"Thank you," she says, touched. "For sure, I intend to, this time at least."

The sky is yolk-tinted, shot with delicate threads of rose and silver and lavender. The square-cut hedges and the green are wet with dew and she can hear the robins singing in their nests. She sways on her feet, almost dead with exhaustion (she would like nothing better than to tumble into the sweet-smelling damp grass and sleep like a child), but she is smiling. She watches as her entourage rides out and then like quite a common woman, walks into the house without ceremony. Her dusty skirt drags out behind her and the servants who open the door for her gawk as though they had seen a ghost.

Past caring, she ignores them, and begins climbing up the stairs, trying to recall from memory where her daughter's bedroom should be.

"Your Grace!"

There is Lady Bryan hurrying towards her, still in her nightcap and rubbing sleep-dampened eyes as though she still cannot believe that the servants have told her truly. She hesitates, quite perturbed, not knowing how deeply she should curtsey, crossing herself in mortal disbelief that this ghost, risen from the grave, should be walking so calmly in her demesne.

"I fear it shall never be Your Grace again, Lady Bryan," Anne says lightly. "And truly, I know as little as you do of how I came to be here this fair morning."

"My lady?" Lady Bryan ventures, wondering if this at least is safe. "Have you come to see my lady princess?"

"Yes," Anne breathes and suddenly she can feel the tears welling in her eyes. "Her and her alone."

"I- of course, my lady. She is still asleep but-" Trying to make the best of a senseless situation, Lady Bryan leads her stiffly down the hallway and to the nursery.

It is a pretty, sunny little chamber. The latticed windows have been unbarred to let the sweet air and sunshine in. Her little girl is asleep in her small bed, clutching her doll to her heart. Her nightcap is pinned to her hair but a few errant red curls stray on to her pillow. She is frowning in her sleep, as though thinking hard.

"I will leave you with my lady princess then," Lady Bryan says awkwardly and dipping a curtsey, leaves as quickly as possible.

When she is gone, the bright, brittle energy floods out of Anne at once and she almost falls into her daughter's bed. She puts her arms around Elizabeth and feels the sting of saltwater trickling down her cheek as her eyes close shut.

"Mamma?" It is the breathy croak of a child woken out of sleep.

With a very great effort, Anne cracks her eyes open. "Yes, my love?"

Elizabeth has her own black eyes, grave and puzzled. "Why are you here? Is my lord papa here too?"

"No, sweetheart. Just me, come to see my little princess. Are you not happy to see me, child?"

"Of course, mamma. But- but why are you crying?"

"Because I am so happy to be with you, my precious darling. Because I have wanted to be with you for months and months and could not. Hush now, dearest, it is too early for you to be up. Go back to sleep."

"Will you be there when I wake up?" the child asks, suddenly doubtful. "I will not go to sleep if you won't be."

Anne forces her eyes wide open and stares straight at the child. "I promise," she says solemnly. "I would move heaven and earth to be with you, Elizabeth. I will never let them part us again."

That satisfies the child and she curls up closer to her mother. "I love you, mamma," she says and she is smiling now, not frowning, as she closes her eyes. She looks like a red-haired little angel.

"I love you too, my baby," Anne whispers and almost before the words are out of her mouth, falls asleep.

* * *

**June 1536**

Honey-stoned Pembroke Castle sits quietly by the edge of the River Cleddau, stout and square-towered and above all things, _safe. _

"Is this to be our new home, mamma?" Elizabeth asks her. In their barge, she is wrapped up in furs against the chill that rises off the river so that only her pointed little face peeps out. She is, as ever, bursting full with questions.

"Yes, my love. We will live here together, just the two of us. How would you like that?"

"But what about His Grace, my lord papa? Won't you miss him?" Not yet three but God bless her, already as sharp as a pin.

Anne hesitates for a fraction of a second too long and the clever little girl says solemnly, "You are happy not to be living with him. Mamma, is it true that he is married but not to you?"

"We shall speak of this later, Elizabeth."_ And not before the servants. _She strokes the girl's bright curls, to take the sting from her words and Elizabeth smiles up at her. They are already best friends.

Later in the castle, ensconced in their own apartments at night, Elizabeth asks, "Are you upset, mama?"

They sleep in the same room, in the same bed indeed as a family of peasants with but one bed would. It is not done but Anne is far beyond ceremony now. There is no one to see what she does, nor care, as long as she is wise enough to keep far away. Anne sits before her looking glass in her shift, arranging her hairbrushes on her vanity.

Elizabeth, who loves to brush her mother's long dark hair, toddles hopefully in front of her but Anne laughs and pulls her onto her lap. "Let me brush your hair for a change, child."

Elizabeth pouts. "My hair isn't as pretty as yours," she insists, tugging at a springy red curl.

"On the contrary, it is far more valuable," Anne points out. "It is red just like the King, your father's. It tells the world whose daughter you truly are and no one can say anything to the contrary."

Elizabeth hesitates a moment.

"Yes?"

The words come out in a rush. "So I am truly His Grace's daughter?"

"You are his most beautiful daughter," Anne swears. "With his coloring - nothing like that sulky half-caste Spaniard, the Lady Mary. You would be foolish to believe any scurrilous gossip that said otherwise." The child's tell-tale blush is answer enough - she has been listening to the servants' gossip. _And to hear them, you would think that they would not run out of gossip till Judgment Day and each day's stories livelier than the last. _

"The King is my father," Elizabeth says slowly. "And you are my mother. But... but you are not married?"

"No," Anne says. "No, we were never married, dearest."

"But you were queen and everyone called you-"

"A false queen," Anne says calmly, denying her life's work, her life's mad scramble to sit on the throne of England. "I am only the Marquess of Pembroke now, the King's former wh- mistress, and I am well content with my station. Queen Jane is the only true queen and you must pray that she gives your lord father a son, indeed that is what we all must hope for."

Elizabeth frowns. "I do not understand," she says. Elizabeth hates not to understand.

"Nor do I, in truth," Anne confesses with a little laugh. "Your father is an alchemist in truth, he can make pure gold out of dross as he did with Jane Seymour, if he chooses. No, don't frown, my sweet. Wiser heads than yours have fallen for understanding - sometimes ignorance is a blessing."

_I will be as sweet and insipid and ignorant as Jane Seymour if that is Your Grace's will, _Anne thinks bitterly. _I would deny my very nature for my life, even if it is a half-life. The Spanish woman did not and she never saw her daughter again. For sure I would do anything to keep my daughter safe.  
_

"But I am not a princess anymore. I am only called Lady Elizabeth, never my Lady Princess." Anne feels a fierce rush of hatred towards Henry, it almost chokes her up and she struggles to control the disgust in her eyes. _You were the greatest fool that ever lived,_ she thinks. _You would put aside your beautiful daughter, the_ _brightest child that ever gladdened a father's heart, for hope of a son from that mealy-mouthed Seymour. God curse her and god curse you, Henry. May you never know any happiness in your sons. _

"No," Anne says and holds her little daughter tightly to her. "And you must pray that you never become one either. You must pray that your father forgets all about you, that everyone forgets all about you."

"I don't think I should like that," Elizabeth pouts. "I love papa. He is so handsome." Anne laughs and thinks that Henry does not deserve his little daughter's devotion. She hopes the girl will forget all about her father and the old adoration, given time.

"Neither would I, at your age. I was always wild to be admired, to be the center of attention and I believe that you take after both your parents in your vanity, my girl." Anne tweaks Elizabeth's nose playfully. "But sometimes, my love, it is better to be happy and known only to a few than to be at the center of the world and its censure. My sister Mary knew that well enough and I always thought her a fool for knowing her place and keeping to it. But now... now I am not sure."

She can tell that Elizabeth does not quite agree with her but the child is only three. She must forget the glamor of her old life, what child, scarcely risen from the cradle, can hold strong opinions about everything? She will make her baby forget. A quiet life in Wales, a little dowry and a simple marriage to an ordinary gentleman, motherhood - Anne does not want anything more for her daughter.

"To bed with you now, child," she says laughing and Elizabeth, still frowning, goes to bed.

* * *

**April 1537  
**

The two sisters sit together in the window-seat, watching the rain pelting down. Their daughters are at the other end of the warmly-appointed chamber, Catherine sewing away sedately and three-year-old Elizabeth lisping away in Welsh with her nursemaid.

"She's a bright child," Lady Stafford tells her sister warmly. "Welsh, French and you are having her taught Latin though she is but four. No doubt she can handle it though, the dear thing is as bright as you were." Anne has invited her sister and her family to Pembroke. She likes to have her family about her now and though she can never be close to George again, she still has Mary.

Anne nods absently. "I wish to God that I could throw this letter into the fire and have done with it," she says, toying with the letter she has received just that day. "I wish I could pretend that I had never received it at all."

"You would be a fool to do so," Mary tells her calmly. "It is the King's will that you go to court for Eastertide and so to court you two must go. Come sister, it cannot be so bad - he is said to be merry and well he should be, with the Queen's pregnancy progressing so well. I doubt that you shall be in any danger."

"But why invite me at all?" Anne asks restlessly. "I thought he would have done with me and pretend that I never existed at all. That is his way, the child's way - to throw away a toy when he is tired of playing with it."

Mary shrugs. "Perhaps to see his daughters?" she suggests. "He has invited even us and Princess Mary."

"Lady," Anne says absently. "She hasn't been reinstated, though God knows his dear little queen tries hard enough. It'll be that Seymour cat's doing, I warrant - she will want to queen it over me and have me kneel and kiss the hem of her gown."

Mary throws back her head and laughs. "As you liked me to do," she reminds her sister. "You wanted me to know my place when I was out of favor and you were in. Why should not dear Jane have the same pleasure from having you dance attendance upon her? And you were never kind to her, she will not easily forget how you made mock of her. Underneath the froth and sugar and those sweet doe-eyes, she is a vengeful woman."

Anne smiles unwillingly. "I was as puffed up as a popinjay. I made enemies as fast as I breathed in those days, the more fool me."

Mary pats her little sister's hand affectionately. "Well you shall queen it at her court," she says warmly, "You shall show the whole world how beautiful you are, far more beautiful and desirable than she." She thinks that the reminder of her sister's beauty will cheer her up - it always used to in the past.

But now Anne sighs wearily and turns her face away. "Not I," she says quietly. "I shall be as dull and dowdy as a mouse. I do not long for attention any more, on the contrary I fear it. And anyway, I can hardly afford it. I have been given no allowance, I shall have to make do with the rents I receive. It is well enough when we live quietly in the country but I must learn to be as thrifty a housewife as my dear, dull sister."

"Who is the happiest woman in the world though she is ever so dull," Mary reminds her, dimpling. She is still a pretty woman, Anne thinks, with a touch of envy, warm and bonny and bright-haired. She is preserved by her stolid stupidity, as though it were salt - fools are always happy, she thinks, remembering Jane Seymour. And she calls Elizabeth to her, "Darling, your head will spin if you learn so many new words. Come and sit with your aunt and me and bring your sewing with you."

Elizabeth does not like to sew but she is ready enough to listen to the gossip with her mother and aunt. Mary scoops her up and puts her into the windowseat and Catherine brings her sampler and sewing box.

"Are we to go to court and see papa?" Elizabeth asks, threading her needle with chubby fingers.

"We are going to court because we have been commanded," Anne says, "and we shall come home as soon as we are permitted. It shall not be very joyous, I can assure you. The Queen is not kindly disposed towards either of us and if I were you, I would not be so pleased to be going."

She is trying to teach her daughter something that runs contrary to both their natures - to be ashamed and fearful of the spotlight. It does not hold, the words slip off Elizabeth like water off a duck's back. But Anne must keep on trying.

"And shall I have a new gown?" Elizabeth demands, cutting to the heart of the matter. She has her mother's passionate love of gowns and jewels and nothing makes her happier than playing with her mother's things - except perhaps, strange to say, learning Latin.

"No," Anne says, "we can scarce afford it." That is not quite the truth but Anne thinks it is better that way. _If I make out that we do not wish to be noticed, we shall not, _she thinks, _Elizabeth can be just another of Henry's bastards_, _like Catherine. _

The court is very merry at Eastertide. Pregnancy has put color into Jane's pallid cheeks and limp hair, joy and security a sparkle to her maggot-grey eyes. She wears gowns cut so that they swell around her stomach, though she is but three months along in her time she might as well be nine months with child she makes such an ado of waddling about with her belly thrust proudly before her. She looks like a Madonna, she wears the brocades and bejeweled silks that were once Anne's, royal purple and fertile green and the rich, dark colors suit her fair hair and translucent skin.

Anne grits her teeth and kneels to her and they both pretend that scarcely two years before, Anne had boxed Jane's ears and called her a slut before the whole court.

"Your Grace," Anne says and kisses the Queen's hand, like a tame bitch might lick her mistress's hand.

Jane smiles her trademark sweet smile and says in her thin little voice, "My Lady Marquess. You have been away from court for too long - your gown and hood are out of fashion. And you used to be called the very glass of fashion!" She wears a gable hood - that most dowdy of creations which would have had the wearer laughed out of countenance had it been worn two years ago. It suits Jane's prim spinsterly face though but Anne would rather die than have the fashions dictated to her by dowdy little Jane Seymour.

"I do not care much for _these_ fashions, Your Grace."

Jane frowns. "The country air does not agree with you it seems. You are terribly out of your looks, why you look old enough to be my mother," she says with just a tinge of malice. Then before Anne has a chance to retort, she waves her away languidly as though she is too high and mighty to squabble with someone so far beneath her.

_I'll warrant she was frightened I would say something to which she had no answer. She was always known for her slow wits - she was worse even than Mary, _Anne thinks spitefully as she is forced to curtsey and step aside.

When the King enters the Queen's apartments, they all rise but for Jane. She sits with her feet propped up on a footstool and he goes swiftly to her, as though he can see no one else. He does not care that she does not rise, his hand goes at once to her belly and he asks her earnestly if she is well, if she wants anything.

"I am well, husband," she says and kisses him. Anne grits her teeth and watches her in her triumph. Then she is forced to admit that if she were in Jane's place, she would do no less. _I was b__red to be spiteful and malicious and resent any success but mine own. I was bred to claw my place upwards, to be a courtier. Dear God, that is not something I would wish upon my daughter. _

"Have you met our dear Marquess?" Jane asks Henry. "She is just come to court." Henry grunts as if he would dismiss the matter but Jane calls clearly, "Lady Anne, do come and meet His Grace." She calls like a woman would call a lapdog and some of the ladies near Anne begin to titter.

She steps forwards and curtseys to them both. "Your Grace," she murmurs and looks up at the man she has not seen for over a year. He looks straight through her, as though she is a pane of glass, a ghost perhaps. She wonders if he is regretting his decision to invite her to court at Jane's behest, his decision to let her live.

"And where is your daughter, the Lady Elizabeth?" Jane presses on sweetly. Her smile is honey-and-milk and Anne would like nothing better than to claw that porcelain face into bloody shreds.

"She is asleep, Your Grace," Anne lies serenely. "The journey has tired her."

"But would you not like to see her, Your Grace?" Jane persists. "She is said to be the very image of her beautiful mother is she not?" That is a bold-faced lie, Elizabeth's resemblance to her father has always been marked upon. What is Jane's game, Anne wonders? She is said to be kindly disposed towards Mary - has pleaded in fact that she be named a princess once more and her place in the succession reinstated. She was said to be a loyal servant to Katherine of Aragon but there is no love lost between her and the Boleyns. _But would she see me hang for her hate? _Anne wonders. _Would she have me burnt as a witch or quartered for __treason? Is her spite so overpowering? _

"No," Henry says shortly and turns away. He would like to pretend she does not exist and not all Jane's baiting can make him take notice of Anne. Not now at least.

Anne lets out a breath that she does not know she has been holding and rises to meet Jane's eyes. They are like chips of dirty ice.

_She cannot be safe, _Anne understands slowly as she goes back to her place. _She is terrified of me just as I was of Katherine. I am the itch that she cannot help but scratch till it bleeds. She was always jealous of my beauty. She fears that he might turn in lust to me now that he can no longer lie with her. She wants me dead just as I longed for Katherine's death. Little good it did me, so long as she does not bear him a son nothing can make her safe. One moment queen, the next prisoner.  
_

And she shudders in the spring sunlight and wishes herself a thousand miles away.

Her only consolation is Lady Latimer. She is a grave young woman of much charm and behind a sweet facade, a most formidable intelligence. They are drawn together irresistibly, kindred spirits who cannot help themselves. Katherine is the most gracious of women and she has friends all around her, even Henry's daughter Mary, even Jane Seymour.

It is the most delightful of pleasures to walk up and down the maze gardens with her, talking of anything that catches their fancy. For a woman with a reputation for serious-mindedness, she can be surprisingly light-hearted - she has been buried in the country for too long, just like Anne and they cannot chatter away long enough about clothes and jewels. But sometimes the talk strays to graver matters - to the classics and the study of the scriptures, sometimes even the reformation of the church. In her own quiet way, dear Katherine is as ardent a supporter of reform as Anne.

The only thing Anne regrets when the time comes to leave for Pembroke is Katherine's absence. "Write to me often," she presses her.

"I will," Katherine promises her earnestly and they embrace, firm friends.

* * *

**October 1537**

She is at Lambeth House, visiting the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk when the news reaches them.

One of the Dowager Duchess's grandnieces, a pretty little thing, comes running to them in the solar with letters from London. She is round-eyed with excitement, Anne guesses that she has heard the latest news from the messengers in the stable-yard themselves.

"Goodness grief, Kitty, don't goggle like that," the Duchess says crossly. "You look like a fish. You have the manners of a Smithsfield slut, no matter how hard I try to whip it out of you."

Belatedly, Kitty Howard, drops a little curtsey and looks like a flushed schoolgirl as Anne breaks the seal of the letter and scans through it. "The Queen is dead," she says, keeping her voice neutral. She drops her eyes so that the Duchess will not see the fierce glitter in them - even at Lambeth, there may be spies around. "I grieve for Her Grace. We must have prayers said."

Little Kitty Howard gapes at her. "You are most gracious, my Lady Marquess," she gasps. "I could never have been so gracious in your position!"

"Oh _Catherine_," her grandmother sighs and pinches the girl. "What am I to do with you?"

"She's only a child," Anne says kindly, "Just turned thirteen aren't you, Kitty?"

Kitty nods and Anne thinks her a most engaging child with her dimples and cream-and-roses complexion but a fool for all that. _When I was thirteen I had the wit of a woman grown, _she thinks detachedly. _I would have had to, living in the court of France where my sister was already known as Francis' English mare and men thought of me as a little whore-in-the-making. _But she already senses that little Kitty Howard is a stupid girl, malleable and feather-brained. _Uncle Norfolk would love her - a Howard virgin almost ripe for bedding. No doubt they will want her at court when she is a little older, especially now that Jane is dead. _

She thinks no more of it and her heart sings as she prays in the chapel for hours so that all might attest to her genuine grief. Only when she is putting Elizabeth to bed - she likes to do it herself - does the child say a curious thing.

"Mamma, why do they call you a witch?"

Her heart stops cold but in her gay courtier's voice she says, "A witch, darling? Really how silly. Wash behind your ears now."

But Elizabeth is not to be put off. "The Queen said you were before she died," she says earnestly, "Kitty was saying."

Anne stands very still. "The Queen? Queen Jane?"

"You said there was only one true queen, mamma."

"So I did, so I did... and what did Kitty say?"

Elizabeth senses danger. At once her black eyes slide guiltily away, she never likes to be involved in trouble of any sort. "Nothing," she says too quickly, a clever dissembler even at four years of age. "She wasn't even talking to me. Mamma - you won't scold her? I like her."

_That you would, _Anne thinks sourly. _She is less feckless than a child of four, that one. _"No of course not, Elizabeth," she says sweetly, tucking her daughter into bed. "Why would you think of such a thing?"

Elizabeth looks as she doubts her mother, but happy that she will not be blamed, says no more of it. She is like a little cat, her daughter is. _And what would you expect from a child born of Henry and me? _

Kitty Howard is brought to the great hall to stand trial before her grandmother and cousin, a quivering mess of nerves and shame. Anne and the Duchess are seated, very grand, under the canopy of state, the Duchess scowling darkly, Anne icy. She falls to her knees in a curtsey, red-rimmed eyes for effect, her cheeks glistening with tears. Oh she is _very_ good.

"What is the meaning of this gossip?" the Duchess demands, very stately. "What am I to make of it when a girl in my keeping, a slut of a girl who is to be made into a lady, gossips with the servants in the kitchen and spreads the most shameful stories about her betters? If I were not so tender-hearted, I would have you thrown out tonight and then we would see if you liked living in a hovel again, Mistress Howard. You have no dowry, no wits, no learning and a but indifferent appearance - all you have is your name and your reputation and you do your best to squander both."

"Forgive me!" Kitty wails, bursting into noisy sobs and the Duchess, vexed, boxes her ears. That only makes the girl weep harder. "I never meant to-"

"I'm sure you did not, Kitty," Anne says softly. The girl puts up her wretched face and Anne looks at her gravely. "But you will need to be honest with me now."

"I would never dream of being anything else, my lady! I swear upon-"

"That's enough, never mind your swearing, you dirty little liar," the Duchess says curtly. "You should be locked up for a week on bread and water, aye, in an oubliette like the foul-mouthed child you are."

"You were gossiping with Agnes Restwold and Jane Bulmer when you should have been at your sewing," Anne tells her. "Slander and scandal. What about? And whom did you hear it from?"

"The messengers from London," Kitty answers promptly. "I was just talking-"

"Flirting again," the Duchess sniffs. Anne shoots her a look and she grumbles into silence.

"-and they gave me the news from London, of the Queen being dead. I was about to dash off to give the letters to you but then one of them, the tall one with the curly dark hair and those lovely blue eyes-"

"-never mind his eyes, you stupid girl-"

"-well he said that it might go hard for the Marquess, what with the King in his grief and no one to say what he might do in his frenzy. And I asked why and he said that in her delirium, the Queen made His Grace promise never to marry you again, my Lady Anne. And she raved that you were a witch, as all knew, and you had cast a most terrible curse on her so that she might die in the moment of her triumph. She wanted you dead, she should have begged that you die like the witch you were, she said. And that she was wasting away because it was your ill-doing and-"

Anne rises, retching. "Sit down," the Duchess says sharply, "you are in position to stand. And you girl, be off with you now. You've caused enough damage for one night." Kitty scurries away in relief but Anne shakes off the Duchess's hand.

"I must be gone from here," she says feverishly. "As quickly as possible."

"What, at this hour? Madness! Sit down, child and we shall talk of this in the morning, you are in no state-"

Anne whirls upon her with venomous hatred. "Good god, my lady, do you not see that I dare not tarry even a single day? That fool child had the King's measure better than you do - in his frenzy he is capable of anything. The greater the distance I put between myself and him, the better."

_Because he is like a child himself, _she thinks, striding out of the hall and already calculating, _because he forgets about his toys when he cannot see them. It was so with all his women, from his mistresses to his queens. I was a fool to try my luck by coming so close to London. This is the last time, the very last time.  
_

* * *

**January 1540**

It has been three years since she has been summoned to court and now she is called again to bend the knee to another queen. This time it is a lantern-jawed German princess, swaddled and barreled up in cloth, with innocent eyes and a childlike smile. She looks sedate and fertile enough, a big, healthy girl in her twenties, a good breeder from the look of her, and Anne wonders why she does not seem to Henry's taste.

It is Kitty Howard, one of the Queen's new maids, who tells her, with the vivid glee of the inveterate gossip. She tells her of the New Year's reception at Rochester, where the girl from Cleves had shoved the king away when he came from a kiss, revulsion deep in her too-innocent eyes.

"Of course he was in disguise like a peasant, when he came to steal a kiss, as he likes to pretend not to be noticed," Kitty tells her importantly, "but any fool would have known him for the King for he is the fattest man at court. But he thought himself the handsome prince he used to be, he thought that any woman in the world would be glad of his caresses, fancy that! And she had not the wits to smile and kiss him back - no indeed, she shoved him off and spat at him!"

"She didn't!" Anne cries and like a girl, throws back her head and laughs her high, rippling laugh. Men turn to look at her, as they used to, and at once she subsides. "Poor child," she sighs.

"I would have known better," Kitty assures her, "indeed I did, for I went up to the King and asked him if we might dance for we were both two strangers at court. He seemed to like that."

"I'll wager you did, Mistress Howard, for you are the most incorrigible flirt."

Kitty gleams at her. "But you do not sound very cross with me for all that. Not like my lady grandmother at all."

"No," Anne sighs absently, "I used to be worse."

She dresses carefully that night, for once she cannot help but be pricked by her old vanity, the vanity that she thought to lay aside in the days when obscurity was bliss. Tonight, she wants to invite comparison and notice - to show the world that even in her thirties, she is still a beauty even next to a fresh-faced girl like the new queen.

She wears low-cut scarlet velvet, slashed with silvery satin and embroidered with leopards in gold silk, to bring out the rich tints of her dark hair and olive coloring. She pushes back her silver French hood far back on her head, to show off the smooth glossiness of her hair. Long pearl-and-emerald drops dangle from her ears, sapphire rings glitter on her long, thin fingers and she wears her pearl choker with the gold B with pride at her slim throat.

Kitty Howard fairly gasps when she sees her dressed and claps her hands like a child. "You look regal," she whispers and Anne can see the barest trace of feminine jealousy in her eyes. Kitty Howard knows herself as a pretty girl, but that is all - she can never compare to the grace and beauty of a grown woman like Anne. It is vastly amusing to see Kitty struggle dutifully to control herself and Anne smiles very sweetly at her as though to say, _someday you might be like me. Or perhaps not. _

There are pretty girls everywhere, as common as daisies in springtime, but a beautiful woman, one not worn out by countless childbearing and a thousand petty demands, ah, that is as rare as a rose in winter.

It is her night of triumph, there is not a man in the room who does not look twice at her - once for her beauty, once for her notoriety. _L'enchantresse, _she is the fallen queen, an angel of flame and darkness. She is dancing with her handsome kinsman, Thomas Culpeper - partly to make Kitty who adores him jealous, partly because he is the most delicious rogue and reminds her so much of George - when Henry calls her.

She curtseys to him and his plump, stolid queen and feels as though she is made of ice in her terror. _Dear God, forgive me for my trespasses, _she thinks, _I wish I had the sense to wear fustian in place of velvet. I wish I had never given way to my vanity. Four years I've been safe and I've squandered it all now. _

"This is my good friend, the Marquess of Pembroke, Lady Anne Boleyn," Henry grunts and the translator at the Queen's side explains. The girl's eyes grow wide for a moment, she puts her hand to her mouth in shock that he should invite his used whore to court (it is not the Cleves way) but she is already clever enough not to say anything. But it is the English way and there are a dozen of Henry's whores, a dozen 'good friends', swanning around at court now - Lady Elizabeth Fiennes, once Bessie Blount, Lady Mary Stafford... Anne's presence is nothing out of the ordinary really. It is to show the world that she is nothing more than a used whore, to be paraded as a common curiosity to the court.

"Very happy meet, Madam Marquess," Queen Anne lisps out and makes an effort to smile.

"As am I, Your Grace," Anne murmurs, still locked in her curtsey. The new Queen does not bid her rise, she is so slow and awkward to command, and it is only when Henry puts a finger under her chin that she is forced to rise unwillingly.

His eyes linger on her creamy breasts, exposed by the low neckline, the slender waist and generous hips of a woman in her best years whose body has not been spoiled by constant childbearing. He looks as though he would like to maul her there and then and for a moment she thinks she would let him, and gladly, if he would forget her afterwards. _I would that he used me like a Smithsfield whore for ten minutes, _she thinks earnestly, _then simmer over his lust and long for me until he could not forget me. For sure, he will not get any pleasure from his queen and he will be sick with longing for all the French tricks that I performed on him. _

"You look very bonny, Lady Anne," he murmurs and he strokes her cheek.

"As much as a woman almost forty can, Your Grace," she says gravely, trying to remind him that she is old goods, used baggage. "Nothing compared to Her Grace, who is so fair to look upon."

"Well, you know what the French say," he says confidentially, "Women are like wine - age only improves them. And you were always very French, my dear - indeed you used to take pride in your... special skills."

The translator's eyes widen at this most inappropriate jest and she does not repeat it to the innocent queen who looks questioningly at her.

"Do I have Your Grace's permission to leave?" she asks quietly and he smiles slyly at her. He even winks at her, as though there is a special secret between them.

"Go," he says, "I would not detain you from your admirers any longer. For sure, you have no dearth of them. Tell me, Lady Anne, would you be as kind to me as you seem to be to young Culpeper and all the other pups at your heels, eh?"

She flushes hotly. "He is my kinsman," she answers stiffly, "I am only courteous to him. I would honor and revere Your Grace above all others, I could never be kind to one so far above me." She curtseys stiffly and practically tears away.

* * *

**Summer 1540**

She is invited to join the court on its summertime progress, as a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. Ostentatiously it is so that she can guide her and teach her in the ways of the court and country and so that Henry can see more of his daughter. It suits no one at all well but Henry and Elizabeth. In a short while he is entranced with his daughter - as no one can help being, Anne thinks with pride. She adores him whole-heartedly and he likes to think that he is the center of her world. He likes to have a pretty daughter to show off, as clever as Mary but with a thousand times more charm, warm and winning and passionately adoring as Mary is not. He calls Mary his pearl of the world but Elizabeth is his Tudor rose and he basks in the love of his daughters during that summer.

It is just another part that he is playing, Anne thinks spitefully, it amuses him for a while to play the doting father and when he is bored he will cast them off again with no thought but for himself.

Elizabeth, the clever little courtier that she is, does well for herself out of it in trinkets and thinks herself well-paid. But Anne, paid in the same coin but forced to endure the King's ever-evident lust, does not think the same. He does not command her to his rooms at night - and sometimes she wishes he would, so that he might relieve himself of the itch. Perhaps he is struggling against his last promise to Jane - that he will never bed nor wed her. But this cannot go on forever, his summer's lust will change to suspicion and hate as hard and cold as winter.

_And then he will name me a witch, _she thinks with cold certainty. _He will regret ever sparing me to be a plague to him forever. He will think it better that I be dealt with swiftly once and forever. _

And she knows that she must start calculating again - not for a throne this time, but for her very life.

Kitty Howard is sixteen years old. She has curling auburn hair and guileless eyes and the svelte figure of a water nymph. She has her eyes on Culpeper for his bonny blue eyes but she is easily swayed. The King likes her as he always likes a pretty girl, she was kind to him in his humiliation at Rochester and he does not forget that. He likes to see her dance - as what man would not? She dances like a whore - and he likes the silly way she rattles on because he adores stupid girls.

It is the easiest thing in the world to impress solemnly upon Kitty that if she impresses the King there will be rich rewards for her. She is cheap to bribe into sweet-tempered submission and easy to frighten. And once her Uncle Norfolk catches a whiff of the game at hand, he puts added pressure on the hapless girl.

It is easy to throw this radiant girl before the King, to dress her in a transparent robe and pretend it is all for a masque where she is to be a Trojan princess and therefore ignite his lust, to teach her old tricks that no child of sixteen should know and marvel at all the sluttish tricks that she already knows.

"Good gracious, child, did you grow up in a bawd house?" Anne often demands of the child and Kitty Howard quickly veils her blue eyes with her lashes and mutters something under her breath. But the more slatternly the girl, the better for her - though she cannot help wondering just what the old Duchess thought she was doing with the young people in her care. Anne does not see any future for the girl but as a royal mistress - in favor as long as she is young and keeps her looks, a few seasons, and then married off.

_She will love being Henry's mistress, all the furs and jewels she can get her greedy little hands,_ she thinks, excusing herself, _And even if she does not, even if she comes to harm - and she is so stupid that she might, once there is nobody to look out for her as diligently as I do - it is better that she does than me. I have a daughter to look after and anyway, it is a hard world and a woman had better learn to live by her wits. If she does not, then it is not my fault. _And so she excuses herself, knowing that she is a hard woman and not caring at all.

* * *

**Autumn 1540**

She is summoned to her Uncle Norfolk's apartments as she was when she was still a young woman with neither name nor prospects, nothing more than her sister's lady-in-waiting. She goes quietly, like a biddable young woman, because now she has neither name nor prospects. _Fortune's wheel, _she thinks and her lips twist into an unwilling smile as she waits in his antechamber like a pensioner and the gentleman usher goes to the inner chamber to announce her to the duke.

_Once upon a time it was he who would be announced to me. Once upon a time I would shout in his face, just because I could. How the mighty have fallen._

She knows it gives him a delicious pleasure to see her make her curtsey to him as he sits in state and stand before being bidden to take a chair.

"Ah... Anne," he drawls and steeples his fingers, "You have done good work for our house. You have been more gracious and more clever than I would have expected of you."

_I didn't do it for you, you old fox, _she thinks, but drops her lashes over her black eyes and says nothing.

"So how do you wish to be congratulated, niece? Is there not some reward you would fancy for yourself? Oh don't give me that look, you, of all women, would never do something for nothing. You are not your sister."

"Sometimes I wish I were," she says shortly.

He ignores her. "Kitty is to be taken to Lambeth," he tells her.

She looks up at him, shocked. "I thought he would want to keep her by him?"

But her uncle shakes her head. "No, he doesn't want her good name besmirched. She's to be as pure as a little rose, she can stay with her grandmother while this... sorry business is transacted."

She is puzzled. "I thought..."

He smiles wolfishly at her, as though he can guess every thought passing through her mind and it delights him. "You thought wrong than, Madam Marquess. He doesn't want to keep the silly child as his mistress, he wants to make her his queen."

She gapes at him but slowly the pieces of the puzzle fall in place. Why Henry has not bedded at all with his German bride, though she is as strong as an ox and looks to be fecund soil to breed healthy sons on - all the easier to throw off the marriage on the grounds of non-consummation. Why he has never sent for Kitty at night, though he is burning up with lust for her. He is an old man, he wants a pretty young wife, young enough to be his daughter, not a little slut to dandle on his knee.

"Dear God," she murmurs, with a sinking feeling. "I should have seen. And what is to become of the girl from Cleves?"

Her uncle shrugs, it makes no matter to him. "She will be set aside, one way or another," he says. "There are a dozen ways to put a wife aside, these days."

"I won't stay here," she whispers quietly. "That is the only reward I claim. To be left alone while you burn that poor girl as a sorceress or behead her as an adulteress or poison her quietly or shunt her to a dreary convent to a lonely death or to her brother who hates her in shame. I won't stay while you make a queen of little Kitty Howard and when you throw her down in her turn, after he is weary of her."

Her uncle shrugs. "He will weary of her," he concedes. "But not for a few years at least. She might give him a son by then and then I won't need to throw her down. And even if she doesn't, I have a stable full of pretty nieces to parade before him, its no loss if a few are too stupid to look out for themselves and need to be shelved. But you can go if you want now, he will have quite forgotten you in all the excitement. You're used goods after all and the strangest thing was that he ever came to fancy you at all for a time this winter."

She leaves London with Kitty's train but instead of going to Lambeth, she departs straight for Pembroke. Seven-year-old Elizabeth is quite miserable. She uses all the arts of rhetoric that she has been taught, to try to persuade her mother to stay at court but Anne will not be persuaded.

"And that's enough of all your fine foibles," Anne says firmly, going through Elizabeth's wardrobe and having most of the silks and brocades that are her daughter's delight packed away. "Entirely too grand for a child of seven. You will dress more plainly, as befits your age and our residence."

"But it does not suit my station," Elizabeth says smartly. "For I am the King's daughter, mamma." She has been made very well aware of her rank - how could she not, when Henry was so pleased to play the doting father during the summer?

"On the contrary, it does, very much so," Anne says coldly. "For you are nothing more than a bastard, though you might think yourself a princess."

Hurt floods into the child's eyes - for she is just a child, though wise beyond her years in some ways - but Anne stares her down coldly. _Better she learn this now than later when it will hurt more, _she thinks to herself, though it hurts her to have to hurt Elizabeth so cruelly. But then Elizabeth drops her eyes and curtseying she says, "Of course, my Lady Mother. It must be as you say."

* * *

**Summer 1541**

_I am low in spirits, _she writes to Lady Latimer. _I have been commanded to join the court on progress by my uncle and I have not the power to refuse his express order, not when he is so bent on my presence. He has a task for me. I loathe the court most passionately, it is a cesspool and I am a poor creature trapped in the filthy currents. I have kept my daughter at Pembroke, though she hates it, it is for her own safety. I pray that you never have any reason to come to court, though I miss you dearly. _

The young queen, her cousin, is slipping. The queen's rooms are as well-ordered as a spoiled child's, she is as incorrigible a flirt as ever, she delights in the company of men and the most boisterous girls, she ignores the King except when she wants a present and worst of all, she has shown no signs of being with child. "And who better to help prop her up than her cousin, so experienced in the ways of the world?" her uncle asks her with a smile.

Her niece Catherine, has joined the court after her churching from the birth of a daughter - Mary Knollys. Together they are charged with the care of their feckless cousin - Catherine with maintaining the order of her younger maids (a most rambunctious lot of silly, vain sluts) and Anne with the more important matter of getting the queen with child.

She is lucky in that the girl is still in awe of her, the great lady who she looked up to when she was a child in Lambeth, the queen who has risen and fallen on Fortune's wheel and lived to tell the tale. "You have to get a son," Anne tells her bluntly, when they are alone in the girl's bedchamber one night. She is brushing her hair before she sleeps.

Kitty drops her pretty eyes and strokes the delicate lace of her nightgown. "He is not capable," she says, making a moue with her red lips. "You know he is not and I have done everything you taught me though it shames me. It gives him pleasure, but that is all."

Anne smiles at her slowly, feeling like a snake. "I said you had to get a son," she says softly. "But I did not say by who."

Kitty turns around, eyes wide. "You cannot mean-"

Anne strokes her hair as she would her own daughter's. "You must trust me," she says earnestly. "I am the only one who has your best interests at heart. For see, I came to court to care for you though I would have been safer off at Pembroke, wouldn't I? Do you think your Uncle Norfolk cares a fig about you? He has a dozen pretty nieces to squander on the King, you are just one of many and it hardly matters to him whether you are queen or a royal whore."

Kitty bites her lip, she is too stupid to think it through, she only hears the words on the surface and believes her cousin. "But isn't it high treason?" she whispers, her face as white as a sheet. "Adultery in a queen?"

"He would never try you for it," Anne tells her. "He loves you too much."

"Yes," Kitty agrees, her easy vanity taking hold of her. "Yes, he loves me to madness."

"He has never loved any woman as he has loved you," Anne lies shamelessly. "Perhaps he would be glad if you got a child, even if it were of another man's making. Perhaps he would be pleased that the world should know that he was still potent enough to sire sons on a young wife - he would be grateful to you. And you would be happy to have some pleasure of your won, wouldn't you?"

Kitty looks at her sceptically. Anne holds Kitty's face between her own hands and smiles gently at her, like a mother comforting a child with a fairytale. "I was accused of treason, wasn't I?" she whispers. "And I got away, didn't I? And now I am the happiest woman in the world, a peeress in my own right, my own fortune at my command, a free woman who may do as she pleases. Even if you fall - and you will not, he loves you too much for that - you cannot fall lower than me, surely?"

"Yes, you're right of course," Kitty says, smiling, and impulsively she throws her arms around her cousin. "You are so good to me, my lady. I shall never forget you."

* * *

**Spring 1542**

Little Kitty Howard never forgets her - who can forgot one's own Judas? They take off her pretty head with a stroke from a French swordsman's sharp blade. The Duke of Norfolk shrugs, says "Amen" and forgets that he ever had a niece. And Anne creeps quietly back home.

"I killed her," she tells her sister. "I killed her as surely as though I swung the blade myself. I promised her that she would come to no harm and put Culpeper in her bed. Dear God, she was only seventeen and more of a child than my own daughter is now." She shivers all over as though she has the ague.

"And is that the most terrible sin on your conscience?" her sister asks her quietly. And Anne looks up at her with haunted eyes and must confess that no it is not - there are worse. "I do not want to hear them," Mary says, looking sick.

"And I do not want to say them," Anne tells her bluntly. "Speaking of them makes them seem truer than they are."

"But, Anne, they _are _true."

"But I never speak of them," Anne says. "How else do you think I can rise so blithely every morning, as though I have Fortune's favor? If I thought of every single sin that I had committed, I would lie in my bed and pray till it became my shroud. I have done terrible things but I cannot dwell over them like other women do, perhaps I am too wicked to do so. Perhaps I am going to Hell. When you have done as many foul things as I have, you stop caring about them. But I mean to do good by one person at least, in my life."

"Elizabeth," her sister breaths.

"Yes," Anne says softly. "She is all I care about."

* * *

**A/N: Slight historical inaccuracies - in April 1537, Katherine Parr was under siege in her husband, Lord Latimer's castle, and not at court. Whew! 10k+ words - more coming up in the next chapter.  
**


	2. 1542 - 1547

**Autumn 1542 **

Anne looks at her girl, just turned nine. Still a child but only in name. Elizabeth has her eyes modestly cast down to the floor, her hands clasped behind her back, the very picture of angelic ignorance which is what you would want and expect of a young daughter. A most delightful picture, but that the girl herself is as sly as a fox.

"Well, Lady Elizabeth," she says sharply, waving the letter in the girl's face. "Do you have any idea what this says?"

Elizabeth's black eyes dart up quickly and very meekly she says, "It must be from His Grace, for it bears his seal. Perhaps a royal summons to court?"

"Don't play the fool with me, girl. I have not the patience for it today."

"My Lady Mother?"

Anne scowls heavily at her. "You are to be sent to Elysinge, to be schooled with your royal brother, Prince Edward. He is six this year and it is meet that he should leave the care of women to begin his studies. He is to have new tutors, scholars of great merit and a court of children of his age about him and you are summoned to join them. Though God alone knows why they thought to house a bastard with the little prince."

Elizabeth cannot hide the brightness from her face, even at the sharpness of the last rebuke. "If it is His Grace's command, then I must obey," she says meekly, "though I shall be sore grieved to leave you, Madam."

Anne slams the letter violently on the table. The girl does not even flinch, she has the most remarkable composure, as though she is not a child at all but a grown woman and experienced in the ways of the world. "This was your doing, Elizabeth!" she says sharply. "I _know_ it. Either you confess quickly or you won't go at all. And none of your nonsense about being sore grieved - you are all but singing in joy, as anyone could say by looking at you."

"But if it is His Grace's-"

"I have my ways," Anne says grimly. And her face is so dark that Elizabeth does confess, with commendable promptness.

"I wrote to His Grace," she murmurs sheepishly, "all throughout the summer."

"Oh I'll wager you did. In Latin, I suppose, to impress him, you vain chit?" Elizabeth's flush is answer enough. "Let me guess - you swore uphill and downhill that you wanted to be a treasure to your noble father and an ornament to his court, hmm?" Anne snaps, her temper getting the better of her.

"I am sorry if it displeases you, Lady Mother. But I have always wanted to be a woman of great learning and follow in His Grace's footsteps."

"It might be the fashion now," Anne says scornfully, "to have girls schooled like their brothers but it'll do you no good when the time comes for you to bear sons and heirs for your lord husband. Did it do Katherine of Aragon any good, or me for the matter?"

Elizabeth's little head comes up and though her voice is subdued enough, there is a flash of temper in her eyes that matches the spark in Anne's own. "I will never marry, Madam."

"Why, not even at your beloved father's behest?" Anne says, laughing unkindly. She clenches her fists tightly, she has the most savage urge to shake her daughter though she has never yet lain a hand on the child in anger. She will control her temper, she must. She has weathered worse storms before - what is it that makes her little daughter's defiance so hard to bear?

Elizabeth looks at her very steadily. "No. Never."

"You would defy him then?"

Elizabeth looks uncertain now. "No, of course not-"

"A pretty quandary, Mistress! What do you intend to do if you say you will not marry but intend to carry out your father's will? For sure he will have you married off quickly, it is only three years from now until you come of age. Do you fancy yourself his beloved Bessie, just because he played with you for a summer and paraded you as his little rose? Fool! He named you a bastard, he would have seen you motherless and me dead on the block if he wanted - you are nothing more than a pawn to him, a brood-mare to be sold to the highest bidder!"

As Anne's voice rises, Elizabeth's face turns whiter but then slowly, a most wondrous change comes over her. Her face becomes like a mask of pale marble, her black eyes serene as the words wash over her. She even smiles a little, as though she knows the most delightful secret and suddenly Anne cannot help but laugh hysterically.

_Bless me, she looks exactly like I would when I had a man on the run - that pert half-smile and the enigma of my eyes. _"What makes you smile, daughter mine?" she asks dryly. She sinks slowly into a chair, heartily ashamed of her tirade now.

"Why, Madam, I was thinking that I wish to be ruled by God in all things," Elizabeth answers sweetly. "For sure, I must obey him first, even before my parents, even before my King, is it not? I would have to pray for his guidance if I were ever put in such a most terrible dilemma as you have spoken of."

"And God would answer you according to your own inclinations, I suppose."

Elizabeth drops her eyes and dimples prettily. _What a little beauty she is becoming, _Anne thinks, suddenly struck by the change in her little girl. She is not golden-haired and blue-eyed like a princess from a troubadour's song, her coloring is not at all fashionable running as it does to shallowness like her mother's. She does not have the delicate features of a Madonna - her nose is overly long, her mouth too wide for comeliness. But she has the richest Venetian red hair like her father and the irresistible allure of her mother's black eyes, which even at nine she knows how to use to her advantage. She is slim and tall for her years and she carries herself with the most stately grace. And she knows how to smile.

"He might," Elizabeth says very sweetly. "Of course I would have to pray very long and very hard to know."

Anne sniffs and then throws her arms wide open. "I am sorry, my darling, for being so cross," she says sadly, "Truly I am. I would never hurt you - it was only that I was so frightened for you at first and... and so jealous."

"Jealous?" Elizabeth slips into her mother's arms trustingly. "I knew you were not very angry - you can never be angry at me for too long, mamma."

"You cheeky little vixen!" Anne cries, but they both know Elizabeth is right. "Yes, jealous, my love. Jealous that you would forget me and not love me anymore - not as much as you did your father at least. What can I offer you that he cannot? Why should you care to love me when he loves you so?"

Elizabeth looks up at her and for one moment it is as though she is the mother, Anne the child. "Oh mamma," she says reproachfully. "You should never say that. You are my mamma and you are all the world to me. Nobody can offer me more since no one will ever love me as you do. I know how much you have sacrificed for me. And I will never leave you, dearest mamma, didn't I promise you that I will never marry?"

Anne chokes back a laugh. "Well, we will see about that. You are only nine now - we'll see how you like the idea of a husband in a few years."

Elizabeth smiles but says nothing.

"And now I must needs make amends for my temper," Anne tells her, tapping Elizabeth's nose. "If you are to go to court you must be dressed like a princess, no matter what you are. And do you know what that means, sweeting?"

"New clothes?" Elizabeth breathes, her eyes shining.

"Aye," her mother laughs, tweaking her nose. "New clothes, you vain little chit."

* * *

**January 1543**

"So you mean to go to court?" Anne demands.

She is visiting her dearest Katherine at Stowe Manor, a visit of bereavement for Lord Latimer has but recently passed away. Not a visit of consolation by any means - Katherine Parr can well console herself for by her husband's death she has been left a rich widow, still young, still comely. They are reading together in her private apartments - their ladies-in-waiting seated further away to give them some privacy. Katherine's ward and stepdaughter, young Margaret Neville reads aloud from some religious tracts for the moral edification of the young maids - and also to drown the sounds of the private conversation.

"What else is there for a woman to do?" Katherine asks wryly. "I thought to join the Lady Mary's household - my mother was one of her mother's most devoted attendants. The Princess Dowager was my godmother and I was named for her, you understand. And the Lady Mary herself used to count me among her friends, at a time."

Anne makes a little face at that. "You have a talent for the most curious friendships, my dear Katherine. If I did not adore you so much, I think I would find you immensely amusing." She thinks over it a little and then adds slyly, "There will be many handsome men at court this season, I should think. And Sir Thomas Seymour is well-accounted the most handsome of them all..."

Katherine laughs. "You will make me blush like a young girl," she says comfortably, but she is too much a woman of her own mind to give away her emotions so transparently. The tips of her ears are pink, but that is all. "I found him very charming when I last went to court but I thought no more, it being unbecoming... but why should I not think of it now, if I am so minded? And if he is complaisant, why should we two not think to make an honorable marriage between us? It would be a good alliance with my dower lands and fortune and his position. A woman in her prime will not be permitted to remain a widow for too long and better that I marry of my own accord than at another's bidding, for marry I must. It is high time he married too and I should think, from a worldly point of view, that we would suit very well."

Anne giggles. "Oh dear Lady Latimer," she says warmly, "I know you are not thinking of it at all from a worldly point of view, though you like to pretend so. I know you want him for himself and why should you not? You have played nursemaid to men old enough to be your grandfather since you were a girl of seventeen - you have done your duty twice over. Why should you not have some pleasure for yourself, now? And to have such a lusty husband as Seymour in your bed - well that is pleasure enough for any maid or matron!"

"For shame!" Katherine murmurs but she is giggling too, like a girl. "I cannot deny that he is most pleasing..."

"More than pleasing!" Anne crows. "And no doubt the King will bequeath something very fine on Seymour when he marries - he is the little prince's uncle, after all."

"And," Katherine says, a little shyly, "He will want heirs of his own now, he is at that age when men long to see sons of their own. You might think me very silly but I have so wanted a child of my own, for so long. I had feared that I might never - but now it is not too late."

"I understand," Anne says warmly. "A man might give you a moment's pleasure - and most do not afford even that, I think - but a child, ah it is a wonderful thing to have a child of your own to love. I miss Elizabeth most terribly, every day, though I know she is well and happy and that I could not do better for her by keeping her shut in Pembroke with me."

"How is she getting along?"

"Oh... blooming, I should think!" Anne laughs. "Her tutors Grindal and Cox write that she is the most marvelous young person they have ever had care of. She is her father's daughter and I am very, very proud of her. Yet sometimes I worry that she is learning _too _much, that somehow it will lead to her ruin. You have no idea of what she told me before she left - she declared that she would never marry. Why yes, she did! Such conviction in a child, of course she will change her mind but it was passing queer, how sure she seemed-"

But Katherine looks thoughtful instead of amused at this. "Perhaps she is frightened of marriage."

"Oh all girls are," Anne says unconcernedly. _Except me. I longed for it for years. _

"Not of the marriage bed, though that is terrible enough," Katherine says. "Perhaps after seeing the fate of her father's wives - perhaps after seeing what a tyrant even a man so beloved to her can be, even to a good, loving wife... I do believe that it has frightened her most terribly. You would do well to speak to her now, to explain it all to her and curb her fears when she is still young enough that talking will help."

"Oh no," Anne says. "I would not like to make a mountain out of a molehill. She'll grow out of it - all girls do. And besides," she says, with the serene conviction of a mother who has never raised a daughter in her teens, who cannot conceive that her child might someday have a mind of her own, "she will always listen to me. She will always put her faith in my judgment and trust me to do the best for her."

"You could marry yourself," Katherine suggests mildly, after a while. "I am sure His Grace would grant you permission if you chose suitably." Delicately she adds, "It has been so long since you have been out of favor."

"Yes, he has quite ceased to think about me at all," Anne says wryly. "I am like an old dog that has had its day, I have been forgotten and drifted peaceably into obscurity. That was always my intention, though it runs quite contrary to my nature. But what man would wish to marry a used whore, when I have been proved incapable of bearing a son, when I have been accused of the vilest calumnies?"

"Oh a great many," Katherine says with a teasing smile. "The most notorious Marquess of Pembroke. You command your own fortune, your daughter is in the King's favor. And you are known throughout Christendom for your beauty."

Anne laughs. "But I do not want to marry," she says lightly. "Unmarried, I am mistress of myself. I do not want another child, my Elizabeth is enough for any mother to handle."

"But do you not ever feel the quickening of desire?" Katherine asks delicately. "The physicians say a woman's humors must needs become unbalanced if she remains too long unsatisfied in her carnal needs, that she runs to cold and wet humors and becomes melancholy."

"My cares and griefs are sore enough to keep me melancholy," Anne says softly. "I think a man, no matter how hot and dry, would only add to them. I have dreamed sometimes of bedsport - sometimes I have ached in longing for it - but no. I am terrified of giving myself again to any other man. There is a scar left on my soul from before and time will not heal it." She thinks of the stableboys and her villeins and tenants at Pembroke - how she has been tempted once or twice over the years, how she has planned trysts in her mind that have all come to nothing. She has always been too frightened to give way truly to desire and now she thinks herself too old to begin anew.

Gently she places her hand on Katherine's and smiles. "But I am happy for you," she says. "I do not begrudge any woman the state of marriage - indeed I think it most right and fitting, women must marry in this world. But it is not something that I can stand again. It seems too much like damnation."

* * *

**July 1543  
**

Lady Latimer joins the court in February and by July she is Queen. It is a dizzying, dazzling rise, as terrifying as it is brilliant. On hearing news of her friend's engagement, Anne spends the whole day on her knees in the chapel - praying as she had not prayed since Kitty Howard's death, since her own dark days in the Tower.

At the wedding, the sixth queen shimmers like an apparition in cloth-of-gold - but she is a pale apparition, more ethereal than corporeal. That bonny Katherine Parr should come to this - the terror of her impending nuptials has made her lose her looks. Henry, who loves a wedding, looks bigger and brighter than ever - he is the dazzling sun to her waning moon.

Little Elizabeth, almost ten now, is radiant. She is delighted to be at a royal wedding, she is delighted to have a new gown of purple brocade and cloth-of-silver, with a French hood aglitter with diamonds. The little prince, Jane Seymour's boy, is charming - fair and almost girlishly pretty and so anxious to behave royally, as befits his rank. Anne's heart goes out to him at once, this is the first she has seen of him since his birth, he is such a dear little thing - and who would have thought any child of Jane's could be so endearing?

Lady Mary's hair is pale blond in honor of the ceremony, to match her gown of yellow silk. It is easier for her to change the color of her hair than the expression on her face, Anne thinks, which is always the same - her lips compressed into a thin, neat line that you could draw with a pin and that ever-present frown between her eyes. She is twenty-six years old, neither a blushing young maid, nor a steady matron, just a wretched spinster stuck in the middle, but she looks as old as Anne herself. In contrast, Anne of Cleves, only a few years older than her, is blooming like a girl. She swans around in the English fashions, the square neckline of her gown cut daringly low, her white bosom exposed without the traditional German tucker that she used to insist on when she was Queen herself, a smart hood on her fair hair and a warm smile on her honest face.

"Well met, Lady Marquess," she says happily, sweeping a gracious curtsy to Anne.

"And you too, Lady Anne," Anne tells her. She finds her a most adorable young woman. "You look bonny."

"Aye, I know," Lady Anne says and giggles. Anne thinks she might have a friend in this girl-woman with the twinkle in her eyes and the warm kindness of her voice. She is mistress of Hever now, Anne's childhood home. _It would be good to be friends with her, if only so that I might visit Hever once more and show Elizabeth around there, _Anne thinks. But she likes the Cleves girl for her own sake too.

But Katherine... ah poor Katherine.

"You will stay with me?" Katherine whispers. "You will be my lady-in-waiting? Please, Anne - I need you most desperately." Her lips are white, she is almost begging - and her Queen of England.

Anne thinks of her own time as Queen of England, when she had no friend to turn to and she answers, "I'll stay. You know I will, for you, even though it is the very last thing I want."

* * *

**Spring 1544**

They are walking, arm-in-arm, in the rose gardens at Whitehall with their ladies-in-waiting trailing behind them.

"I have been very fortunate in my attempts to re-conciliate His Grace and the Lady Mary," Katherine says. "They are closer than they have been in years."

"How sweet," Anne says dryly. "A loving father and a pretty daughter - only that he is even less loving than she is pretty." _And God knows that the yellow-faced little dwarf is not pretty at all. _

"I am her stepmother now," Katherine says quietly. "It is my duty to love and care for her, as I would my own daughter. And indeed, I do love her for herself as well, for she is a young woman of grace and great intelligence who has weathered the most grievous misfortunes." Anne says nothing, for what can she say now?

_When I was her stepmother, I fantasized about poisoning her soup. I had her named a bastard before Christendom, where she was once Princess of Wales. I made her wait on my own infant daughter and I would not let her see her mother on her deathbed.  
_

"I have suggested to His Grace that she might be reinstated," Katherine murmurs delicately. "He has seemed amenable."

Anne's lips twitch. "He will never acknowledge her as his true-born daughter for that would mean to acknowledge that he was truly married to her mother. He is too proud for that."

"Perhaps he will never have her named a princess, nor his marriage to the old queen recognized," Katherine concedes. "But no one can deny that she is his daughter. I had thought - and he has some thoughts on it too, about which I shall say no more - that she might be installed once again in her proper place in the succession, after Prince Edward."

Anne starts violently. "A bastard on the throne!" she whispers, her hand going to her heart. "Mercy, such a thing has never been done! What makes you think it _can_ be done?"

"He _is_ the King," Katherine says, "It is his prerogative to decide who shall succeed him - that is, if he can get Parliament to accede of course. But why should they not? She is loved by the people for her mother's sake, the great lords were all amenable that she be called heiress presumptive when she was still a child. Why should she not be reinstalled in her proper position, once more? He would rather that the heirs of his body succeed him than his sisters' heirs - and see, he has already changed the succession once so that the Princess Mary's heirs come before the Princess Margaret's. Why should it not be changed once more?"

"The heirs of his body," Anne murmurs. She turns to face Katherine. "Please to God you promise me that you have no such plans for Elizabeth."

Katherine drops her eyes guiltily. "I had some thoughts though I had not spoken of them-"

"No."

"But, it is her proper place-"

"_No_._" _Anne's lips are white. "Promise me that you will never mention such a thing to His Grace - and I pray to God that he does not think of it himself. I do not want this for my daughter, to be torn apart as she surely will be if ever she is named an heiress in Henry's will."

"But her chances would be so remote that they would not bear speaking of," Katherine says soothingly. "It would only be to restore honor and dignity to her name, to give her her rights. Surely you want that for your daughter?"

"A worldly, scheming mother would want that," Anne whispers, "like my own mother would. I am a mother who loves her child and I cannot, in good faith, ever want the same. She does not need honor and dignity, she needs happiness. She has the Fitzroy name, that is enough that she is his acknowledged daughter. She will have my estates when she comes into her inheritance, they will do very well for her but not so much that she will forever be in the baleful eye of the storm."

"Very well," Katherine says, pursing her lips. "I will speak no more of this, though I think that you do her a grave injustice. And I do not think that she will forgive you for this, when she comes to know."

"You forget that she is a child of ten and not even at court," Anne says. "How will she ever come to know?"

"You forget, my dear, that she is Elizabeth. I would not underestimate her, if I were you."

* * *

**September 1544**

It has been a most glorious summer and she has spent it traveling with the children of the royal household. It has been Katherine's summer of triumph, she has reigned for three months as regent with Henry gone to war in France. With a much smaller court to maintain, she had had sent most of her ladies away for the summer. Anne spent it in the position of the Lady Supervisor of the Prince's household.

"For I know you will want to spend the summer with Elizabeth," Katherine had told her with a smile. "And no one can object at your newest appointment being so close to the Prince for there is no one at court now to object. So go with my blessing."

Elizabeth has just turned eleven. Only a year left until she is of an age to marry, Anne thinks with a pang of sadness, only a few months perhaps till she becomes a woman now. She has not yet considered any suitable marriages for her daughter, that is her father's prerogative but perhaps he might choose to leave the primary arrangements to her, with only the power of veto over her choice.

Elizabeth's dearest friend is the Dudley boy, Robert, the Duke of Northumberland's fifth son. He is a handsome devil, of an age with her, as swarthy as a pirate, with the bold, dark good looks of a Spaniard. Prince Edward adores him and to Elizabeth he is Robin and they are inseparable.

_Perhaps we might consider a match with the Dudleys,_ Anne thinks absently. _Robert i_s _too young, but perhaps the eldest boy, if he is not yet pre-contracted. It would be something to see my daughter as the Duchess of Northumberland, what with the Dudleys so high in royal favor. And I do not think they would mind a royal daughter-in-law, who carries her own fortune.  
_

They are in the apple orchard, relaxing in the warm sunshine, Elizabeth translating a book of prayers to present to her father for Christmas, Anne embroidering a vest for the same.

"I hear that my sister, Lady Mary, is to be reinstated," Elizabeth says quietly. "Though not to be named Princess."

"Hmm," Anne says. "She bounces up and down like a cork in the water, that one, heir one minute, bastard the next."

"Perhaps His Grace will think to reinstate me as well," Elizabeth says, her voice deliberately neutral.

Anne glances up. "I would not look to hope for that," she says cautiously. "The Lady Mary is beloved of the people, for her mother's sake, but you are virtually unknown. There are many who still call her Princess, there are many all over Christendom who would champion her cause joyously - but none to champion yours, my dear."

"No," Elizabeth says, setting down her book. There is a hard, unyielding note in her voice. "I do not hope for that, Madam. Since it is you who betrayed me and decided that I should never be reinstated, that I be made very well aware that I am a bastard and nothing more."

"Elizabeth!" Anne's hand slides guiltily to her mouth.

"Will you deny it?" Elizabeth demands fiercely. "Will you lie to my very face, Madam?"

"No, Elizabeth, you do not understand-"

"I understand that you are a most terrible mother to me," Elizabeth snaps, jumping to her feet. She is working herself into a fury as magnificent as any of her father's tantrums. "You who should be the first champion of my cause! Lady Mary's mother chose to die and never see her daughter again rather than give up her cause. And you? What have you done for me?"

Anne stands too and realizes with a start that they are almost of a height. She was always been slightly built, a petite woman, but Elizabeth is shooting up like a beanstalk. "I have done _everything _for you," Anne says quietly, resisting the urge to give the insolent girl a good shaking, a hard slap to teach her to mind her manners and count her blessings. "I have lived for you and for sure that is much harder than dying for you, as anyone would know but a fool."

Elizabeth glares at her. "I will never forgive you for this," she says curtly and sweeping a grand curtsy marches away with her head held high. Oh how very theatrical. Anne sinks down into the grass wearily, too weary in her heart to chase after her daughter and make her understand. Presently, she forces herself to rise, knowing that the breach will not heal itself without intervention.

The children are in the music room, she is informed, the younger ones practicing their scales. When she enters, little Jane Grey is playing at the virginals. Elizabeth, with the authority of an older cousin, is criticizing her under the guise of instructing and from time to time, Prince Edward does them the honor of poking his head out from a book to offer his weighty opinion - mostly that Jane might care to practice more and that she let herself be guided in all ways by the most estimable Lady Elizabeth. Robert Dudley and Barnaby Fitzpatrick are playing at merels in the window-seat, being neither musically nor critically inclined.

Jane, the buttermilk-colored little sop, takes the advice most earnestly. "Elizabeth, should I do it this way?" "What do you think Elizabeth?" "Please do show me, Elizabeth." And so on. She is seven years old but tiny for her age with forlorn eyes in a waifish face and a cringing solemnity of manner that irritates Anne to no end. She seems to alternate between terror of and disgust of Anne - no doubt she was told stories about witches and sorceresses and succubi who steal men away from good wives by her nurse. Elizabeth however, she seems to adore - or at least fear healthily enough to pretend adoration.

Prince Edward nods gravely at her when he sees her. He has been brought up to be gracious, to keep an impassive face and manner. He has been taught that she is his father's good friend, his favorite sister's mother - and that is all. No whiff of scandal has been permitted to reach those tender ears, he thinks of her just as he would any other lady of the court whom he does not know very well personally. And anyway, he is a cool boy, slow to emotion, never betraying his feelings in all the time she has known him, neither for rage nor joy.

"Elizabeth, I would speak to you," Anne says quietly.

Elizabeth flushes in temper but in company she has no recourse but to curtsy and follow her mother outside. They walk down the portrait gallery, arm-in-arm. "I am sorry for hurting you," Anne says abruptly. "I would that I had any other choice but all I did was my duty."

Elizabeth nods. "Yes, lady mother," she says gravely, "I know how well-practiced you are in doing your duty."

"Speak your mind plainly, Elizabeth, there is something you want to say. I have no wish to creep around words with my own daughter."

"Very well then, if I must speak, I will." The girl's head shoots up, defiance sparking dangerously in her eyes. "You lay with your own brother, Madam, to try to bear a son for England because you thought it was your duty."

"Elizabeth!" Anne's hand shoots up to her mouth. "Have you run mad?"

"I have heard things that no daughter should have to hear of her mother," Elizabeth hisses. "And which no daughter would have to, if she had a good mother. The Lady Mary can speak of her mother with pride, can remember her with honor for she was a most virtuous woman - her name is a comfort to her. But you?" Elizabeth's face twists in disgust, she looks perilously close to tears. "There were charges drawn up against you seven years ago for incest and adultery and high treason. You had lain with scores of men - courtiers and lute-players and your own brother! God's blood, Madam, my own uncle? Is that why I have never seen him though he lives in the country? I see enough of my aunt who is also a twice-named whore."

Anne's hand cracks out, she slaps Elizabeth so hard that the girl sways on her feet. One of her rings catches on the girl's lip and it begins to bleed. But it is not enough to stop the rush of words, to keep her from unearthing the sordid old secrets - and from where has she learned all this and had the wherewithal to store them in her heart without any outward show? How long has she known? How more does she know? Who has she spoken to or written to?

"The charges were scrapped," Anne says coldly. "As you must very well know if you go hunting in the midden. My marriage to your father was not a true one, I was never his wife and so how could I be false to it?"

"There are some who might say that the charges were scrapped to reduce the shame of the scandal that would surely have followed if they had been made known to the world. That you were truly an incestuous adulteress."

"There are many who know that the charges were false, framed against me because I could not bear a son. There were many of who were jealous of my rise, many who could see profit in my fall and the Seymours' rise."

"You did," Elizabeth whispers. The blood is drying on her chin, there is no pity in her face, she condemns her mother with a child's quickness. "Twice, perhaps thrice, after I was born you carried children. They died in the womb, the last one piteously deformed. A child born of sorcery and incest, no wonder he was tainted." She rubs her torn lip. "You think only of yourself, there are the vilest reports of your doings when you were queen. You have had dealings in many mysterious deaths, if there were many who were glad to see you fall it was because you brought it upon yourself. I will have nothing more to do with you, Madam, ever. You might have borne me but you are no true mother to me. You are a monster."

She turns on her heel and marches off, leaving her mother torn between rage, worry, bewilderment - and guilt.

* * *

**Summer 1545**

She has not seen her girl for near on a year now and in the span of under a twelvemonth she has changed forever. Gone is the child with the unruly carrot-colored curls forever creeping out from beneath her cap, the child whose tongue never seemed to stop and whose questions were as many as grains of sand on a beach. Anne might as well long for the buttery-limbed, rosy-cheeked infant she was or the little thing in smocks lisping at her Latin and rolling in the grass with her puppy.

A young maiden, a woman in truth as well as law, of almost three-and-ten glides down the stairs at Hatfield to greet her lady mother. She has been sitting for a portrait, she wears a rose-colored over-gown of damask, slashed to show the silk kirtle embroidered with roses underneath, lavishly fringed with pearls and garnets as befits a king's daughter. Her hair has darkened this winter, closer to copper than carrot you would have to say, and she wears it under a pearled French hood. She wears a ruby-crusted cross at her neck, a gift from her father, but she also has a string of pearls with a gold E for a locket.

She is her mother's height now and still growing, she dips a courtly curtsy at the foot of the stairs and rises with a dancer's grace, the Boleyn grace. "Lady mother," she says and clasping her hands behind her back offers herself up for inspection. She is as smooth and polished as the pearls on her hood - and just as indifferent.

Anne checks her ebullition and throwing the girl a cursory look says coolly, "You'll do."

They plan to spend part of the summer at Rochford Hall. Ten years, it has been ten years since Anne has last seen her brother. She has dreamed of this day for years. There have been few letters passed between them - and all those monitored, she is sure - and she has scant news of him since Mary seldom visits George's family either. But after ten years they might meet again without scandal or notice.

She can hardly recognize him in the moon-faced, barrel-bodied Norfolk landholder who greets her in the manor hall. He has raised a thriving crop of children with Jane Parker - two boys and three girls who trail after their mother like disconsolate ducklings. George, Jane, Elizabeth, Thomas, Catherine. He has the swollen, ruddy skin of the inveterate drinker, he is as acetic as ever and his comments slice deeply - his children and servants flinch when he speaks to them. He is a hard father, a malicious lord and a henpecked husband - no, henpecked does not describe it. He shouts like a boar at the high table, fondles whichever serving wench takes his fancy, drinks to indiscretion - but always with his eyes darting slyly to his wife's, seeking her approval, her permission. Damocles under the sword.

The years have been kinder to her sister-in-law. She is as sleek as a well-fed tabby cat, gaudily decked out. A most excellent châtelaine it would seem for her estates are all in tip-top order - and heavens know George was made to be a courtier, he will have no interest in maintaining his lands, that is all his wife's work. A harsh mistress, perhaps, a strict mother though she doubts upon her younger boy - five-year-old Thomas who is as handsome as his father once used to be.

She is most delighted to see her "well-beloved sisters" - for Mary and her brood have accompanied Anne. She peppers her conversation with allusions to her connections at court, she hints at having her oldest girl, ferret-faced Jane, join Elizabeth at Hatfield. She is always ready with an old scandal about their peers and she has a steaming vat of the foulest gossip ready and waiting.

Anne watches her cut into her veal with a hunting dagger - so rare that it is still bloody - and remembers all the rumors she has heard about Jane. _It was she who swore that George and I had lain together, _she remembers. _She wanted us dead to gratify her malice and spite. _It is hard to sit still at the table and answer Jane politely, she plans to curtail her visit short - she had come to see her brother but she thinks there is nothing left of him. Jane Parker has made him her own - it is a gross perversion to see him barreling through the courses and to remember the slim-bodied, darkly handsome youth he once was.

Jane seems particularly fond of Elizabeth. She flatters the girl, insists that she dance - Elizabeth, vain as only a Tudor can be, is more than willing to oblige -, admires her Greek, asks her opinion, treats her as though she is a princess in truth. It is revolting.

"Your Aunt Rochford seemed most taken by you," Anne observes to her daughter that night.

The girl is warming her bare feet before the fire, penning a letter to Robin. She shrugs, the gesture so French, so prettily done that Anne thinks that any young man would be utterly captivated by her daughter. "Many people are," Elizabeth observes simply. "I was much admired at court this Christmas. What a pity that you did not choose to attend this winter, Madam."

"I was deathly ill at Pembroke as you well know," Anne says sharply, though deathly would not be the proper word. "Rather" would be more fitting. "If you were a dutiful daughter you would have attended me instead of dancing at the revels."

"As a dutiful daughter, I was in attendance upon my father," Elizabeth says sweetly. "He commanded my presence and for love and devotion, I could not refuse him. You, my lady mother, did not even ask me to join you."

"I should not have to _ask_ my only daughter," Anne says waspishly. "So you are much admired, hmm? Yes I have heard some rumors myself. The Danish ambassador seemed quite taken."

"There was talk of a marriage," Elizabeth says coolly. "But it was scraped."

"And did you tell your most beloved father of your own thoughts on marriage?"

Elizabeth purses her lips and returns to her letter. Anne laughs shortly, running her brush through her long hair, still fine and dark like jet silk though she is in her forties.

"I find my Aunt Jane a most pleasant lady," she says after a pause. "Though I feel that you do not share the same opinion of her. We have been in correspondence for a good year now, if you must know." Her lips curl cruelly, she is as malicious as her father now. "She was more than willing to divulge certain... stories that you would like to pretend that time has buried."

Anne is very still for a moment. To joust with her wits is something she is not new to - but with her twelve-year-old daughter in their own private chamber? "Stories. I could tell you many if that is what you want, daughter." She makes a sharp slicing gesture with her hand.

"But would they be corroborated?" Elizabeth asks softly. "Lady Rochford was good enough to offer me other sources should I not care to trust her. It was lucky for you, Madam, that you were not married in truth to my father. Better a whore than an adulteress, I suppose." She rolls up her letter and rises to her feet. Dipping the most perfunctory of curtsies, she saunters to the door to her own chamber like a woman well-satisfied with herself.

"Elizabeth," Anne says sharply. "Do not think to judge me before you have been in my own shoes. You call me a whore. Very good. But remember that someday you might have a daughter of your own and she might call you a whore."

"I will never marry," Elizabeth says with ponderous dignity.

Anne's lips curl. "But you might have a daughter."

It is not a happy summer they spend together. They stay only a week at Rochford Hall - the atmosphere as poisonous as a vat of stinking fish. Elizabeth would much rather be with the court on their summer progress or failing that, with her brother's household. She is resentful at being at her mother's beck and call, at having to learn tasks that she deems beneath her rank.

"What use is it to me to know how to supervise the churning of the butter or to learn about how to order a good stillroom?" she demands heatedly. "I shall have servants for that."

These are the traditional household duties tasks that young women of good birth have always been taught. It adds to their value in the marriage market and helps them become better châtelaines. Clearly above a girl who thinks herself as good as a princess. Most fathers, as Anne reminds Elizabeth, consider it enough if their girl can read a letter, sign her name and cipher enough to see to the household accounts - Greek and Hebrew, astronomy and mathematics are considered less than necessary at best, dangerous follies at worst. No one wants a clever bride.

"Your future marriage is unsettled," Anne says, throwing her a quailing look, defying her to snap that she will never marry. "If you are wed to an English lord as I expect you shall be, these are the duties you will be expected to fulfill as mistress of your own household. As your mother, I can pass these skills on to you which shall assuredly be of more use to you than how to simper away in Greek and chart the course of the planets. Your father might be pleased to show you off as his clever little girl now but when you are married, he will expect you to be a good wife and the mother of many sons."

It is spite that sharpens her tongue - Elizabeth is a brilliant scholar. She is in correspondence with the greatest minds in Europe, her tutors sing her praises and laughingly call her Minerva. She has opportunities that Anne, even with her hungry mind and keen wits, never had as a child.

They repair to the West Midlands in midsummer, where they have been invited to Dudley Castle by the Duke of Northumberland. The eldest son of the house, Henry, has been dead a year now - killed during the siege of Bologne. The family's new heir is John, Viscount Lisle, a comely boy of eighteen. Anne has Henry's permission to scope out a marriage - "permitting that it suits our daughter, Elizabeth and that she is well-pleased with both the match and the husband". It is a good match, but not so great that he is actively interested in fighting for it. If it suits Elizabeth, very well then, she is a good girl and he is fond enough of her (and she is unimportant enough) to indulge in her little things. If not, oh very well then, another marriage, perhaps a better, can always be arranged for her.

The thought of adding Pembroke to his domains pleases the duke and a royal daughter-in-law - even a bastard - for her precious boy is to the duchess's utter delight. By all the stars, they should have suited perfectly - there is only five years between them, the boy has the dark good looks of the Dudleys and is by all accounts, most erudite. Elizabeth adores Robert Dudley - surely she will be fond of his older brother, so much more courtly and charming?

They would have been perfect, Anne thinks resentfully, but for Elizabeth's violent streak of contrariness and love of dispute.

When she gets wind of the match in the air, she does not stamp her foot and bellow like a bull as she would have a year ago. Quietly, behind her mother's back, she pens a letter to her father and that is the end of that. All the careful years of planning, all the delicate negotiations - gone, just like that.

"I hope you will be very happy, Mistress Elizabeth," Anne seethes to her daughter as they leave Dudley Castle, "when your father arranges a marriage for you to a moldering corpse with one foot in the grave. I hope you will remember that bonny boy whom you rejected completely out of hand, on a whim, when you are put to bed with a man that your wise and loving mother would never choose for you."

Elizabeth crosses herself piously, smirking a bit. She is too smugly joyful in her triumph to care. "It shall be as God wills," she says devoutly.

"Amen to that," Anne snaps waspishly.

* * *

**Christmas 1546**

_His Grace is not well,_ they say. It is treason to predict a king's death or to even think about it - when they say 'not well', they mean 'dying'. There is rumor of another marriage for Elizabeth. Francesco, the thirteen-year-old Duke of Mantua, is the latest candidate in the offering. But then really there are always rumors concerning the marriage of the king's daughters, though so far Henry has never exerted himself beyond the stage of talking to various ambassadors. _And now he never will, _Anne thinks and wonders how long Henry is for the world.

_What a waste, _she thinks sadly when she remembers the golden prince he was, a David then, a Goliath now. _And there are many who lay it at my door - I am the Jezebel, the Delilah who cut off Samson's hair. The dark temptress, the witch. _

She wonders what would have happened if she had never stepped in the breach of Henry's marriage to Catherine. _She would have died when he was still in his prime, _she thinks reasonably, _and he would have contracted a marriage to a French princess perhaps. She might have given him sons but then again she might not have - so few of his mistresses have. And what would have become of me? I would have a dozen children by now, married to some minor baron in the country, I would perhaps even have grandchildren. _

A few years ago she would have thought of that prospect with relish, with relief. Now her lips curve into a smile and she thinks that she would not exchange her life for any other, no matter how comfortable, in the world. _It would be too dull, _she thinks, _and whatever I am, I am not made for dullness. _

She is forty this year, not yet past childbearing and there are still many who look upon her with desire. _I might even marry, _she thinks, casting her eyes idly over the court gallants as she sits with Catherine's ladies. There are boys half her age, handsome boys who amuse her with their wit and intrigue her with their conversation, well-born and ambitious and reminding her not a little of the men of Henry's chamber who flocked to her when she was queen. They do not flock to Catherine in similar fashion - she does not stand for it and the atmosphere of this court is different.

_They would not mind taking a rich wife, _she thinks, _and I could do with some young blood to entertain me. It will be very dull when the little prince becomes king, there will not be any place for women in his court for many years, not until he has a queen of his own. _It is an idle thought but it brings her hours of amusement - she flirts indiscriminately with them all, secure in Henry's illness and indifference.

There is to be a masque one day and Elizabeth is to take part, she is to be Diana which delights her. She is to wear a gorgeous gown of silver satin slashed with iridescent peacock-blue silk, a mask of white fur and glittering foil and a headdress shaped like a crescent moon edged with pearls. Watching her dress Anne is reminded of the old masques in Catherine's court when she used to take part, of the one in particular when Mary first came to Henry's notice - she was Kindness and Anne herself was Perseverance. _We were very well-named by Catherine. She was always a sharp woman, except when it came to looking out for her daughter's interests it seems. I did better than her in that regard. _

Nostalgia softens her, saddens her. She half longs to be a girl again, to be young and beautiful with her whole life in front of her. _I would have walked down the same path, _she thinks, _danced down it, in truth. It was never in me to step back, I always had to leap up. _

She straightens the half-moon curving crookedly on Elizabeth's hair and realizes the girl is shaking. She is crying and Anne folds her into her arms as though she is a little girl, as though there was never any thought of a breach between them. She kisses her little girl's hair and presses her tight to her heart.

"Oh sweeting," she sighs, "Is it about your father?"

Elizabeth nods faintly and buries her face in her mother's shoulder. "I was thinking it might be our last Christmas together," she says, her voice cracking. "They never tell us anything but I know he is terribly weak. Oh mother, I could not bear that he might die."

_I could, very well indeed, _Anne thinks nastily but she only says, "Oh my love, we all must die one day. You know that. And death is sometimes easier than life - the last few years have not been good to your father. He will be in a better place." It hardly consoles the child but she gives a small nod.

"Did you weep when your father died?"

He has been dead nigh on eight years now - Elizabeth was only five at the time and she has no memory of either grandfather or grandmother, not having seen then since she was three.

"No," Anne says simply. "He was never a good father to me, in truth. He had some fondness for my brother because he was the heir to our house but Mary and I were only chattel to him. He was pleased with her when she worked on her back for him but after your father was finished with her he called her a whore and sold her off quickly - you must know the story about your aunt. And me... he would have agreed to name me guilty of any sin when I was no longer in favor to save his own skin."

"I never believed those filthy lies," Elizabeth whispers. "I just said them that day because I was angry that I had never been told about what had happened, because it hurt that you went behind my back about the succession-"

"Oh darling, shh," Anne says tenderly, stroking her Diana's hair. "It does not matter. It never did." And as simply as that, they make their peace.


End file.
